Lazing These Down, Here

Cluster Bombs

President Joe Biden on Friday defended what he said was a “difficult decision” to provide cluster munitions to Ukraine, a move the administration said was key to the fight and buttressed by Ukraine’s promise to use the controversial bombs carefully.

I don't see it as a difficult decision. The Russians have been using cluster munitions in Ukraine since the start of the war. One of the Golden Rules of Warfare is "I'll Do Unto You Like You Did Unto Me." If the Ukranians can make good use out of cluster weapons, fine, send them on over.

The Fuckery That Is Putin's Russia

First off, they've had close to 50,000 soldiers killed in his failure of a war of conquest.

Roughly 47,000. That is how many Russian soldiers have died so far in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to a joint study by journalists at Meduza and Mediazona and Tubingen University statistician Dmitry Kobak. Analyzing existing reports about published obituaries, mortality data from the Federal State Statistics Service, and extensive records from the National Probate Registry, we estimate that between 40,000 and 55,000 Russian men under the age of 50 died fighting in Ukraine by May 27, 2023. When factoring in the number of men wounded so seriously that they did not return to military service, Russia’s total casualty count rises to at least 125,000 soldiers, based on our calculations. (This figure does not include missing or captured soldiers or Ukrainian nationals fighting with Russian proxy forces based in Donetsk and Luhansk.)

In 15 months of fighting (from February 24, 2022, to late May 2023), three times more Russian soldiers died in Ukraine than Soviet troops over 10 years of war in Afghanistan. Nine times more soldiers were killed in Ukraine than in the first Russian-Chechen War between 1994 and 1996. The numbers presented below are remarkable not just because they signify the tens of thousands of men Vladimir Putin has sent to die in a war of aggression but also because the authorities have labored tirelessly to conceal the invasion’s true and growing costs to Russians themselves.

When one adds in the thousands of men who have fled Russia to avoid being drafted into the Czar's war, that is a serious loss of fertile-aged men for a country that is already facing demographic collapse. Immigration could help, but seriously, who, other than North Koreans, would want to immigrate to Russia?

Now, let's shift gears to the aborded Wagner Revolt:

Russian President Vladimir Putin met mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin after the failed Wagner group mutiny last month, the Kremlin says.

Prigozhin, who heads the mercenary group, was among 35 Wagner commanders invited to the meeting in Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov added.

There have been times in the past where a rebellious commander, like Prigozhin, would have been dragged to Lefortovo Prison for some interrogation under torture, followed by his execution. So the question is whether Putin is seriously weakened that he can't afford the risk of having Prigozhin shot or he is playing a longer game.

Bet That They Are Already Claiming that He Was Killed as Part of a Conspiracy

The leader of a QAnon cult who convinced thousands of people that former president John F. Kennedy and his son JFK, Jr. are still alive has died, VICE News can exclusively report.

Michael Protzman, 60, died last Friday in the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota a week after an accident at the Meadow Valley Motocross track in Millville, Minnesota. Protzman’s death was confirmed to VICE News in a phone call with the Minnesota Department of Health.

His wet-brained followers believe that this is all part of the plot to reveal the TOFF as JFK, Jr., or that the TOFF has JFK, Jr. stashed away. Maybe he's impersonating RFK, Jr. Who the hell knows what they believe, because they are all about as crazy as one can be outside of a locked ward.

Multiple Choice Question: Iowa Republicans are (a) Racist; (b) Stupid; or (c) Both

Iowa Republicans announced Saturday that the party’s presidential nominating caucuses will be held Jan. 15, on the federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr., putting the first votes of the 2024 election a little more than six months away as the GOP tries to reclaim the White House.

The anacephanic who is the state party chairman said that they were honoring Dr. King by holding the caucus on the holiday, but then admitted that nobody considered that it was a holiday when they scheduled it. So they're trying to cover up stupidity by racism, I gather.

Even Cadet Bone Spurs wasn't that stupid/rqcist. When someone pointed out that his rally in Tulsa (home of the eponymous massacre) was scheduled for Juneteenth, he, at least, moved it by a day. The Iowa republicans probably figure that there aren't enough Black republicans to matter and they're just has happy to subltly suggest to them that Black republicans stay home in order to keep Iowa white.

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

A MD-11:

Killing People for Hubris (and Money)

The only positive thing about the OceanGate disaster is that the clown who essentially guaranteed that it would happen died in the implosion. It was about as inevitable a disaster as can be.

At every step of the way, Stockton Rush seemed to revel in defying common sense. the laws of physics, and good engineering practices. He hired people who, whether from inexperience or lack of training, didn't know what they were doing. He used materials that were not suited for the purpose, because he thought that defying the rules was a good thing. Which may be, to some extent, but when dealing with hostile environments, safety rules are often written with blood. Rules come about because people have gotten themselved killed, or killed other people, from doing stupid shit.

There seems to have been far less oversight of the construction of OceanGate's submersible than there is of some guy building a GT400 in his garage.

Here's one that can be learned: When you want to take a ride on something, and the operator tells you that you're going to be given the title of "mission specialist," think really, really hard about finding something else to do for funzies.

Caturday

Chip listens to an approaching thunderstorm.

Because It's Friday

You see a lot of Brit steam here because it's the easiest to find and this here's not a paying gig.

Kids, You Are So Fucked.

Sweltering heat is blanketing much of the planet, and one unofficial analysis says the past seven days have been the hottest week on record, the latest grim milestone in a series of climate-change-driven extremes.

It's not just a few days of global heat. The icepacks are melting at record rates, the oceans are warming.

You were told this was going to happen. You've been warned for decades. More carbon dioxide has been dumped into the atmosphere since knowledge of the problem became generally available than had been since humans began burning coal to any great degree.

But did the primary users of fossil fuels do anything? Nope. They sat around with their thumbs in their mouths and their heads up their asses while the fossil fuel and auto industries shoveled out the same lies and obfuscations that the tobacco industry did about the dangers of smoking and the car industry did about tetraethyllead.

And nobody wanted to listen. Because the problems would happen in the future and what has the future done for us? It was more fun to watch the goings-on of stupid celebrities who really do nothing productive. We were more concerned about who was marrying whom and what kind of kids got to play what sports or what pro baller took a knee and other inane culture-war issues, instead of doing something about the building fire that threatened our only home.

So now the first chickens are coming home to roost. Over the next decades and beyond, there will be a lot more chickens. The plastic-filled seas will continue to rise. Weather will become more extreme. Areas of the globe that have been fertile cropland for generations will cease to be so. As the glaciers melt and disappear, potable water will become much harder to get, much more expensive, in places where a billion or more people live. There are already climate-fueled mass migrations. There will be wars over dwindling resources.

It's not as though people weren't warned. But we all refused to listen. We refused to act in meaningful ways. One city recyling its waste was good, but it didn't make a dent in it. Buying a Prius instead of a Challenger would be meaningless (unless tens of millions did).

Only now, it's not a problem for the future. It's a problem for us. We've heated up the Earth too fast and contaminated it in the process. If your family has babies on the way or very young children, you may want to apologize to them when they're old enough to understand.

Because things are going to get worse, and they're the ones who are going to in the thick of it.